Provision to help New Orleans regulate taxis is stripped from bill

BATON ROUGE -- New Orleans suffered a setback this week when the state Legislature refused to consider an amendment to a truck-driving bill that would have allowed the state to help the city police its taxi industry.

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Without objection, the House voted late Wednesday to delete from House Bill 174 by Rep. Henry Burns, R-Haughton, a proposed amendment that would have allowed the state Office of Motor Vehicles to issue identification cards and hang tags to cabbies after checking their arrest and conviction records.

Although Burns said earlier in the House Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works that he was glad to help the city -- and all government entities in the state that regulate taxis -- he asked the full House to strip the amendment before advancing his bill for floor debate, now scheduled for Monday.

Burns said House officials told him the amendment was not germane to his original bill and could have jeopardized it. Laws that are adopted can have only one intended purpose.

Burns' original bill would allow truck drivers with reduced vision to haul non-hazardous loads, but they could not haul oil, gasoline, chemicals or hazardous wastes.

The bill states that the driver must have 20/40 vision in at least one eye without a corrective lens, be able to discern traffic signal colors, have previous commercial driving experience and a 70-degree field of vision in one direction and 35 in the other.

The amendment helping the cities police their taxis was sought by former Sen. Ann Duplessis, now New Orleans' deputy chief administrative officer whose office is reviewing problems in the city's taxi bureau, the local agency that grants permits and licenses to cabbies.

She said the change in the bill would have helped city officials monitor the status of cabbies, using state computers to search those who may be arrested or get tickets. The searches could also reveal arrest and conviction records of applicants before the city issues licenses and permits.

Duplessis said she was disappointed but not surprised by the House action. She said House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Algiers, told her in advance that he would rule that the amendments were not germane to the original bill.

"We may try to find a stronger instrument" to amend, Duplessis said, since Wednesday was the last date to file fiscal and local bills.

Duplessis said she is confident another bill can be found that will allow the state to do background checks of the drivers, authorize state IDs and tags, and tie the license plate of the cab to the city permit so it cannot be transferred or sold improperly.

House Clerk Alfred "Butch" Speer said that any amendments a committee makes to a bill are mainly recommendations until the House ratifies them and advances the bill to full floor debate. In rare cases, the amendments are stripped from a bill before debate in a procedural vote.

Speer said Tucker asked him to be on the lookout for amendments that could create a second purpose and jeopardize the original bill, and he recommended to the speaker that the taxi amendment be removed.

The House used similar reasoning Thursday to strip a New Orleans amendment from House Bill 125 by Rep. Franklin Foil, R-Baton Rouge, that set a formula for divvying up revenues from a new Baton Rouge riverboat that is projected to open in 2012. The amendment added to the bill in the House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice by Rep. Walt Leger III, D-New Orleans would have made permanent a $3.6 million annual state allocation to the city of New Orleans for police, fire and emergency services in the area around Harrah's casino.

Leger has a separate bill to do the same thing pending before the House Appropriations Committee. A similar bill passed last year but was vetoed by Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Leger said he realized the amendment to Foil's bill was a "hitchhiker," legislative parlance for an amendment to possibly expand the scope of the original bill. "I thought this one would jump in the back of the truck" but was taken off by the full House at Foil's request, Leger said.

Foil's bill now heads to the House Appropriations Committee where Leger is a member.